


Something Always Survives

by paladin_cleric_mage



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-01 02:42:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18327050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paladin_cleric_mage/pseuds/paladin_cleric_mage
Summary: "Some investigators have tried to solve the old problem, 'if a man, die, shall he live again?' and in many cases they have come to the conclusion that this life does not end all." - Alexr. VernerNOTE:This ficlet most likely will not be finished. However, I am going to leave it up for those who wish to peek inside Homer's head.





	1. Homer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GypsySisters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GypsySisters/gifts).



> [homersnde.tumblr.com]

_It isn’t like jumping into an invisible current. Not at all. It’s like jumping into a pool and finding yourself suspended in plasma, hanging there with no way to move._

_A pale orange light like a burnt sunset shows me which way is up. There’s the hum of a great machine surrounding me, one that I am now a part of, but how? Am I another child waiting to be born? And if so, what from? What is the purpose of this machine? And why do I feel so old?_

_I stretch out, hoping to see my body, my hands, but I see nothing. The current isn’t invisible-- I am. A cross between an embryo and a ghost, at once alive and unliving._

* * *

 

_The hum becomes thunder and suddenly we are shaking, my invisible self and this machine._

_“Dr. Percy!”_

_I know that name, and the voice that spoke it, though the words aren’t mine. Alarms in the distance, my senses functioning while my body fails to exist temporally._

_Satisfied laughter jolts me and just like that, memories burst all around, snapshots of feelings rather than images in a mind I no longer occupy: glass perspiring against my skin, the skin of my face wet with tears, a pasture, lush and green._ _The searing pain of sunlight and a single whispered sound._

OA _._


	2. Dr. Roberts

“Homer?”

Ms. Azarova is dressed in almost all white-- a coastal outfit, though I know her to be a Russian heiress. Her eyelashes are sticky with tears and despite having seen patients arrive this way a hundred times, I find her striking and am stunned when she calls my name.

It takes a moment to ground myself. I'm wearing a name tag, of course. Besides, my mentor, the esteemed Dr. Percy, worked with Ms. Azarova’s partner, so it’s possible they’ve spoken about me-- that she has heard my name.

But it isn’t the name so much as the feeling that unsettles me.

Some time ago the clinic had a carbon monoxide scare. For a moment none of us were ourselves. The already unstable Scott, Rachel, and Renata changed drastically, Dr. Percy had a period of confusion, and even I felt that something had jumped inside me. Later that night, at home, I told myself it was the strangeness of the day. Nothing to worry about. A good night’s rest, or a good lay, would put me back in order.

Something told me it wouldn’t work like that, and even now I feel it lurking, worming its way to the surface of my mind. Like when you're attending a funeral and a stranger who watched you grow up approaches you. You’re supposed to remember them, but you don’t, so you smile and act gracious, both of you ignoring the dead body across the room. The one that mysteriously defines your connection.

What is my connection to Ms. Azarova?

She calls herself, _‘OA’._ I repeat the strange name and she melts, as if I am delivering some miracle sermon that will save her, and it's because I feel nothing that I feel something. I feel rude not remembering her, because as surely as Dr. Percy wrote _Quantum Psychotic,_ the woman sitting before me knows who I am.

 


	3. Homer

_“Homer?”_

OA!

 _She’s here,_  here _in this place, alive and calling for_ _me. I must_ _get to her, it’s crucial to our survival that we each know the other is safe. Has been all along, and Hap knew that, which is exactly why he kept us apart._

_Seven years. In seven years we touched once, for a brief moment before a gunshot rang out and I was gutted by my worst fear. He’d shot OA. Hap had caught us and killed her. But of course he hadn’t-- she is his coveted prise, a reward for his blasphemous, mutilated morality. That night he didn't kill me, either. No, what he did was worse than any fear my starved brain could have conjured._

_He took her away from me._

_And her voice from the other side of the door, palm banging and then patting until she slipped away, almost moaning my name like an incantation. If only I could materialize on the other side of the door. If only I'd been quicker, but years confined to a five by five space made my reflexes slow, and my thought process slower. Before I could find something to break down the door with, I heard her body crumple. And I crumpled, crippled by what would inevitably happen. She would be locked away in a hidden cage, where the blossom of her spirit would wither, her soul a loose, felt tipped thing draping over bones. I would never see her again._

_When he came to claim me a day later, bathed in the stink of two bloating bodies, he told me she was gone. Alive, but alone in a forest, barefoot, over state lines. With no way to contact us or know where we are, she could never find us. Hap assured me I would never see her again, not in this dimension nor anywhere else, and in that moment I couldn't feel her, couldn't sense if his words were lies or truth._

_I begged him to erase me, the same as he'd erased Autumn. I latched onto death like a prayer, please, please give me this soft descent into nothing. No more NDEs, no more return tickets. Just the darkness that comes after._

_He didn't kill me, either, but I didn't understand why until he brought the four of us remaining into the light and gave us a choice. Perform the movements or die. I knew what I wanted, and ran for it. Then I heard her in my heart._

_Now we are in the same space. I’m near her yet trapped inside another cage-- a living, breathing cage she recognizes as the man she loves._

_God, she_ loves _me. How could I be so lucky? How could such a tragedy be real? I’d discount it, write this whole experience and every part of myself off as a dream, but I’d be blocking her out, too. We know better than anyone that anything perceived is real, whether in this plane, this dimension, or another. It’s a matter of finding your truth. Our truth. We agreed we would find our truth together, a place where we lived free of confinement and abuse. One where we had a garden, flowers that bloomed. Wherever she was she held onto hope that she would bloom again. I had to honor that. Have to, honor that._

_How long can we remain in one reality without touching?_

_The me speaking to some ‘Ms. Azarova’ doesn’t know who OA is. I hear her sigh and_ feel _it._ _My visible self doesn’t remember her._ _But my invisible self does._  



	4. Dr. Roberts

Ms. Azarova is in session with Dr. Percy, upstairs in his office. She was hesitant to go, but I trust his course of treatment, and respect his right not to divulge to me all the details of his plan to help our special patients.

I’m incredibly fortunate to work under Dr. Percy. He takes such a unique approach to clinical work, especially this rare case. It’s improbable that strangers suddenly began to share the same mind. How do these delusions work? Is this some sort of act on their part? Dr. Percy and I are going to get to the root cause and help these four people heal; I’m apprenticing under the best.

I’ll admit that I’m curious as to just how rare the case is. How many are there like this in our country? In strangers? Scott and Renata came to bearing stories of a shared trauma they could never have possibly shared. Rachel agreed. What's odd is that these stories didn’t come up until after the carbon monoxide incident, and while these patients were all admitted within the last few days, their relatives deny any connections. Still, they remember me.

Now there’s a fourth puzzle piece. A late arrival. What will Ms. Azarova's story be like? What has she already told him upstairs in that office? Has her initial confusion from the hospital worn off? More importantly, who am I to her?

To Renata I am the bastard that tricked her into captivity.

To Scott I am a friend, a man with talents I certainly don’t deserve to claim.

To Rachel-- well, she looks at me with pleading eyes, a sadness weighing on her that wasn’t there before the incident, as if she sees through my skin, to the muscle that wraps around bone, and what a tragedy human life truly is.

Because what is the opposite of the miracle of life but the tragedy of its imminent closure?

  
  



	5. Homer

_ OA is in the Angel Hunter’s hands. _

_ In any dimension, he is a despicable man. Of that I am positive. Truth across time and space is unchanging, and even if it could change, his darkness is so overwhelming it would color him wherever he traveled, a grotesque shadow. _

_ OA’s light follows her everywhere, never wavering. That’s why I feel her, even buried inside myself-- this version I would kill if I could only unzip the skin like a jumpsuit and let it drop to the floor, deliberately removing myself from the losing team. _

_ Hey, Dr. Roberts? I am not you. I would hate to be you. You sleep, naively believing that science and spirit exist separately, when even infants know they are one and the same. _

_ If Death knows our names, why wouldn’t Birth? Why wouldn’t the very scientific process that gave us this recognize our need for spirit? We are all paintings waiting to be revealed within a canvas, tattoos hidden within our solid skin. Science carves away, articulates brushes revealing our spirit. Our souls. _

_ As a scientist, Hap uses polluted ink that runs the length of canvas, ruins the integrity of the art. He rationalizes this insanity by saying it’s all about curation, choosing, finding the best. He is the scout at a football game who chooses the child stinking of desperation. The one who’s slightly unhinged, who gets back up after an obvious concussion and continues playing. _

_ The Angel Hunter salivates because this desperate child is the cheap workhorse, the one who will readily give themself away and enjoy the pain-- or at the very least accept and embrace its course. _

_ I was the workhorse. OA was the one who embraced. Science and spirit, inextricable. _

_ In this dimension I am an idiot who thinks science has no spirit. _

_ Suddenly an intercom beeps I Hap’s forced gentle tone echoes. “Ms. Azarova is feeling uncooperative…” _

_ My body jerks into motion. I hear a drawer slide open. Dr. Roberts says, “I hope it doesn’t come to this.” _

_ Doesn’t come to what? _

_ Hey! _

_ HEY! _

_ What do you plan on doing, asshole? _

_ Answer me! _


	6. Dr. Roberts

“You’ve forgotten,” she said. “You’ll remember.”

There is something I’m missing.

* * *

I don’t like isolation as punishment, but that wasn’t what drove me to the internet last night and again this morning. It wasn’t curiosity either. I am compelled by something deeper. The way she leaned into me, the words she spoke.

I need to understand why these strangers believe they share trauma, and how myself and Dr. Percy became a part of their story. Why is he so excited by Ms. Azarova’s arrival? Is it because of his connection to Ruskin, or something else?

What I find in my research is disheartening, leaving ever more questions. The French term for shared psychosis is  _ Folie a Deux _ . Two. A strong emotional link between two unstable people, that’s key. Here we have  _ four  _ people, lacking an emotional link prior to admittance to Treasure Island. I no longer see their case as an improbable rarity, but a concrete impossibility.

* * *

For the first time in my residency, I challenge Dr. Percy. He isn’t happy to hear that there’s not a single case of shared psychotic disorder across strangers, and I’m embarrassed I brought it up. We discuss Ms. Azarova’s case, and how she thinks--

“-- that I’m her soulmate.”

Who said that?

I did, but I’m startled, because those aren’t my words. Nowhere has anyone suggested that Ms. Azarova sees me as her soulmate. That notion came from within, and it spooks me. Eerie, like her screaming my name.

* * *

It’s uncomfortable being told things about myself that I wasn’t present for.

Ms. Azarova cries during our first session. Tells me, with silky gold hair framing her face, that I loved her even when she asked me to believe impossible things. I want to ask what those things were, because what she’s telling me now is impossible, and I don’t believe her. Yet there is no jury in any court on Earth that would dare say she’s lying when she says she won’t give up on me. Her conviction cannot be falsified.

It’s haunting. A second passes where I doubt my sanity.

Then she says an invisible me is crawling around the air vents, and I’m immediately returned to reality.


	7. Homer

_ OA is crying far away. It travels through the wall and into his body, pulsing the plasma I’m suspended in like a speaker. _

_ At his desk, Dr. Roberts stops tapping his pen and listens. _

_ I try to scream, let her go! She doesn’t deserve this! _

_ He can’t hear me. _

_We spent too long in isolation, separated from each other even when we could plainly see. Now she sees me but I can’t see her. I am willing Dr. Roberts to ache for OA-- for him to feel what’s in my soul. She needs_ _me, which means she needs_ us.

_ He pauses, considers. Better chance than any I’m going to get; I concentrate on conjuring a memory for him, grinding the rusted gears of his imagination. To Dr. Roberts it might feel like deja vu, or an itch in the back of his throat, or maybe like nothing at all. But I have to do something to get closer, to break free. _

* * *

 

_ We couldn’t sleep. _

_ Rachel, not since Autumn’s disappearance. ‘Disappear’, because Hap’s word of where she went could not be trusted. Was she alive? Dead? Released somewhere, or tied up in another room, a different cage? _

_ Scott, because he couldn’t stand her sobbing. He claimed he’d always had trouble sleeping; the biggest reason he loved drugs was how they lulled him to sleep. With OA indefinitely in tears he couldn’t rest, and it made him more agitated and unpleasant than usual. _

_ As for me? I felt bad for her. Unlike us, she was blind-- a disability that’s inherently isolating. Now to be in the dark, in a cage with only the touch of cold stony earth as affection, I couldn’t fathom her pain. No friends or family, no way of knowing in the slightest how or what she’d gotten herself into. _

_ ‘Gotten herself into’, because there was a moment for all of us where we could have resisted Hap. Something didn’t feel right about his questioning. I remember ignoring the instinct, and then there I was. I wondered what OA’s moment was. _

_ To stop her crying, I distracted her. Offered a smile. Asked her name. How good it felt on my tongue: _

Prairie _. _

* * *

_ I will Dr. Roberts to see this, to remember her cry and recognize her as more than a patient. She is in mourning, missing the man she just sat a whole session with. A whole session with her love, and no acknowledgement or reciprocation. I am only inches away and I am tortured by his opaquity. _

_ If I had a body it’d be shaking with the need to answer her-- to hold her. _

_ Yesterday she leaned against Dr. Roberts, her words so clear, and I couldn’t see her or feel her. I couldn’t collect her in my arms or stop my own hand from betraying her with a sedative. I have never hated myself more than in this liminal, plasmic space. _

_ Please, Dr. Roberts! Remember her long yellow hair, braided and curled over her shoulder. Remember her winter hat, how thick the yarn was before it disintegrated into the stream. Her lilac floral dress, how it still held together years later. Like our faith. _

_ Our love. _

_ Please, remember her and the dream her name inspires. _


	8. Dr. Roberts

Easy, right? Release Ms. Azarova into the rec room and take notes. See where this connection comes from. Prove Dr. Percy is right, that this is the first case in strangers, and extinguish my own flicker of doubt.

Ms. Azarova-- Nina-- sees Renata at the window and approaches her. Renata coldly sends her off, returning to the view and her cigarette. I’m jotting notes and almost miss what happens next: Scott spots Nina. As the distance between them closes they’re all tearful giggles, like siblings reuniting after years spent on different coasts, bathed with an innocence like best friends who discovered they both survived a school shooting, having been across the building when the gunshots rang.

They embrace, and I am unspeakably chilled.

* * *

“Would you be so kind, Homer, as to tell me what in the hellfire you were thinkin yesterday?” Scott demanded.

“What I was thinking about what, Mr. Brown?”

“Mr. Brown,” he scoffed. He stood up from his chair in the group conference room and leaned down to scold me. “To you I’m Scott, and that’s _it_. I wanna know why you’re actin like you don’t know who Hap is, why you stopped me from stranglin that monster to death!”

“How would you like me to act?” I asked, pretending the exchange wasn’t the least bit disturbing.

To my left, Rachel hung her head, silent tears flowing. To my right, Renata’s penetrating eyes shifted. The hand holding her cigarette trembled. Before the carbon monoxide incident she had never asked for cigarettes. Luckily she had the money and behavior to grant her the privilege. Scott, who had attacked Dr. Percy, wasn’t so fortunate.

“Maybe,” Scott began, “try actin like you give a damn! Aren’t you wonderin why we’re all here and OA’s not?”

“OA?”

He chuckled. “I’m gettin real tired, Homer. Real tired. We don’t have time to waste. We need to get out of here and expose Hap for who he is.”

“You mean Dr. Percy?”

“No, I mean _Hap_. The Angel Hunter.”

When I didn’t reply, Renata quietly interjected. “It is no use. If he doesn’t remember by now there is nothing we can do. Homer is dead, same as his precious girlfriend.” She waved her cigarette at me but spoke to Scott. “Let them rot together for sending us here.”

It was uncomfortable, her announcing I had a mystery girlfriend. I wanted to question them, but also wasn’t sure how far Dr. Percy would want me entertaining their fantasies. He was observing our session at that very moment. His reason for putting me alone with the patients was to give them a chance to open up without the intimidation of an authority figure. Sounded like a good reason, but at that point I felt more like bait laid out for the wolves.

“Homer and OA didn’t send us nowhere,” Scott told Renata. “Hap did. And he’ll pay for this.” He turned to me, his voice strained by emotion. “Maybe you’re just blockin OA out cause it’s too damn painful thinkin you survived, while she’s dead in another dimension, but trust me! She’s alive, and she’s on her way here. I can feel it. Rachel can feel it, too, in’ that right, Rachel?”

For the first time since the session began she lifted her chin. She nodded at him, then slowly met my eyes and nodded again.

I turned to Renata. “And what do you think?”

She exhaled. “I think that you ruined my life.”

* * *

Nina, Scott, and Rachel turn to stare at me through the glass; mirrored glass they’re not supposed to be able to see through. Their eyes penetrate me. They know I’m here, and suddenly _I am_ the specimen being scrutinized, and they are doctors full of wisdom, waiting for me to wake up.

What is more disturbing than being studied is the steadfast feeling that they are my peers, and that I am concerning them, choosing to miss out on an event I was meant to be apart of.


	9. Homer

_I have traveled to other dimensions._

_I have had lucid dreams._

_I have died._

_But not once have I been hidden away inside myself, watching some other version of me pedal a fantasy._

* * *

_The reunion makes me proud, and hope he can feel that. But he feels terror. I taste it, though I’m not sure what scared him._

_Then something about Rachel communicating with OA and Scott, something about teenagers in a house. Anything can help us figure out this puzzle and set ourselves free!_ _Hap aggressively disbands the reunion, and Dr. Roberts is surprised. How? How can he be this blind to Hap's true nature? It shines out through Dr. Percy loud and clear. I can hear it from within this darkness. Why doesn't he? How does he support Hap returning OA to isolation, and taking Rachel to his lab?_

_One wrong move and everyone’s endangered, again. One step forward, two back. Right?_

_I wish I could laugh about this with her._

_We both considered it a breakthrough. To Hap, it was rebellion, and Dr. Roberts can't feel it. Or, he's too cowardly to question his superior any further than he already has. We are nothing like each other._

_Well, nothing like each other after I met OA. Before her I_ was _cowardly. I wanted the life that society promised would make me happy. Sports scholarship. Sweetheart. Career that could pay for the house and kid. Mandy hasn’t been forgotten, nor my child-- who I have never met. For all I know she could have miscarried. It’s not pretty to imagine, but I’m not dumb enough to hope for the best when everything I loved has fallen apart._

_Although, I can't help wondering if Dr. Roberts ever dated a Mandy. I know he's single, I know he lives with roommates. But could there have been a Mandy in his past? Is there an anonymous child he pays support to? I doubt it. He'd have to be more awake than this to be a parent, even a distant type._

 

* * *

_Later on, I feel Dr. Roberts heart thundering. Someone has taken OA!_

_It’s so loud I almost miss the information he discovers. A private investigator, Karim Washington. I memorize the name when Dr. Roberts confronts the woman at the front desk. It makes me think of OA’s Khatun. Khatun, Karim. Could there be a connection? Could she have sent someone to save her?_

_Or, is this an enemy? Maybe Hap hired someone to capture OA so he can work on her away from the hospital, where no one knows about his experiments. Maybe, too, Karim is a man from Nina’s life. Dr. Roberts and I are equally disoriented, shocked._

_All I can hope is that she’s safe with whoever took her, that she’ll have a better chance of surviving with them than she’ll ever have in here with Hap. And, whether or not Dr. Roberts is fired for letting this happen to OA, if I can move him again I can break free from this suspension and swim toward the orange light. Unstick myself and reverse his un-remembering._  



	10. Dr. Roberts

It’s just me, Renata, and Scott. Rachel was transferred out, and Nina has yet to be found.

Ruskin claims to have no idea where she is, and while he seems sincere, I remain doubtful. What if it wasn't an escape? What if he hired someone to capture Nina? Apparently when she first saw Pierre at the hospital she firmly stated she didn’t know who the man was.  Didn't know who he was, but wanted to fall into my arms-- strange.  Since he knew she wouldn’t come home with him by volition, maybe he forcefully took her back.  If Ruskin _had_ captured her, would she have screamed for me? Is her silence the clue confirming she escaped? And if so, to where?

Scott is perversely satisfied during this session. He believes that Nina escaped, and that it’s a good sign for all three of us. He chastises me like a child again, and I fold to it, feeling dumb and out of place not remembering this underground world that Dr. Percy has assured me does not exist.  Something inside me says I deserve the embarrassment I feel, which is frustrating. _I’m_ the doctor here. I’m the sane one. These patients have no right to make me feel less than, just because I don’t share their fucked up delusion.

I throw my notebook and pen to the ground.

Renata watches calmly. “She’s gotten under your skin.”

Yeah, she has, but admitting that shows a weakness in me that I don't want them seeing, let alone Dr. Percy, though he's smart enough to sense it. My doubt. My foundering.  Has Nina always been like this? I want to ask, but every question is futile. First off, Scott and Renata didn’t know Nina before she arrived here. Second, anything I ask leads me back to the start. Caught in a never ending circle, a loop I didn’t design. As a practitioner I am not supposed to allow things to get to this point, where the patients are all but mocking me.

Scott tells me that during the seven years we shared underground, I got under Nina’s skin. But he doesn't call her Nina. He only calls her OA, even though there is no record of such a person existing in the state of California now or in the past. Nor is there record of Prairie Johnson, Nina's supposed third alias. Similarly, there’s no one by those two names in Michigan, where Scott claims OA is from.  Of course I checked; anything like a lead I’ve followed, to make a map of their delusion and hopefully find proof enough of nonexistence to bring them back to reality.

What if I can’t? What if I can’t help them? We’ve already lost Rachel, and now Nina. Dr. Percy is hopeful, as he always is, but my hope is faltering. One minute I'm resolute in trusting him, and discrediting them, and the next I'm doubting with my heart fluttering in my throat.  It’s too much, like  Nina saying I was in the ceiling, or insisting I’d have an epiphany if I joined her in jumping jacks. How insane!

But, then--  _ You loved me _ .

I end the session there.


End file.
